And We All Fall Down
by The Queen of Asgard
Summary: Eleanor "Ellie" Cornelius is a broken woman, trying to stand strong against a crumbling secret that she has lived with her entire life. But when she stumbles upon something so deadly it has been hidden for thousands of years, can she put a stop what has been set into motion? Can she prove to herself that she is strong enough to save herself...and the one she loves the most? SpockOC


**Eh meh gerd. I have to wake up tomorrow at 0400. Yee. Freaking. Haw. Oh well, whatever.**  
**This idea came to me while watching Transformers and then watching the second Star Trek right afterwards. Anyway, I know, being in the military, most people have to have some college experience to get into a military academy. WELL...we're pretending that's not going to happen. My story takes place after Star Trek: Into Darkness. It's not really based on anything except my own brain. Take as you will. **

**Other than that, I own nothing canon. Reviews are beautiful butterflies in the fields of my life. I own my OC Ellie Cornelius. **

* * *

_I had a heart then, _  
_But the Queen has been overthrown. _  
_And I'm not sleeping now, _  
_The Darkness is too Hard to beat..._

* * *

_It's been said by some that our destinies, like the motion of a raging river or the even the turning of a planet, can be moved by something with enough force to shake the very foundation of our being. Like a river or even a planet, it will change course, perhaps go a different path and become something so great that not even the stars themselves can hold it back._

_It's been said by some that our destinies, like the mountains themselves, are set in stone, never to be shaken. No matter what happens, every action is meant to be to get from point A to point B, one way or another._

_It's been said by some that destiny is nonsense. My parents drilled that into me and my siblings the second we were out of the womb. Destiny was good grades, a good school, fitting in with the right people. You controlled yourself and that was that. No destiny, no stars, no...nothing. Then again, my parents never believed much in the stars or that sort of thing. My father was a chemist, one of the best in the UK while my mother was a professor, as cold and as apathetic as the piece of ice her heart had been molded out of. To say the least, my childhood was a cold, uncomfortable experience._

_I had two siblings and I was the youngest. My brother excelled under my parent's perfectionist lifestyle while my sister danced until she became one of the best that Earth had to offer. Even when she died, my parents excelled in their stony silence, never shedding one tear at her funeral. After that, I would wake up in the middle of the night, screaming for my sister to run as a creature made of stone and metal ran towards her, crushing her in its metal jaws until she was nothing but a bloody pulp. I was 15 at the time._

_After this, my parents sent me away to a boarding school. My brother was 24 and as cold and hard as my mother with a drinking habit to match. I was almost sure that the two of them were probably secretly fucking in a cold, unyielding silence, their hearts never melting even under glowing hot bedsheets._

_I never cried. Even when I missed them dearly, I never cried. I found my release in languages. Any sort of language, it was fair game and I picked them up with alarming regularity. Up until I graduated, I spent nearly every day in the library, surrounded by the company of long dead poets and writers. To my schoolmates, I was a shadow. I wasn't nearly pretty enough to be noticed nor was I ugly enough to be scoffed at and teased. To them, I just wasn't...there._

_The day I graduated, many of my peers came up to me and made comments about how they had never seen me and were surprised that I had even gone to school with them for 4 years. In a stony silence that I had perfected, I would just nod, turn on my heel and then look away, towards where my father was standing, watching me._

_I had come home for summers but he had never been there. My brother had moved several years previously to London to be with his fiance who was just as icy as our mother and so it had just been me in an empty house. I never even thought about getting my driver's license and so I literally held the company of my sister's ghost and my cat, Socrates. I had seen my father occasionally but never enough to hold a conversation with. His eyes always looked dead and tired and he always complained about being exhausted._

_However, the look my father wore now was not one of exhaustion or apathy. They were alive with a fire and a darkness that I had never seen before._

_"Well," He said sharply, hands behind his back in a military fashion, "You applied for colleges, didn't you?"_

_I looked down at my pristine white shoes, ears burning, "No Sir."_

_I could hear the dissapointment in my father's voice, "I saw your marks. Unacceptable."_

_"I know, I'm sorry." I tried to say, trying to blink the tears out of my eyes._

_"Sorry isn't going to cut it. You do realize your brother was in college by the time he was 16?"_

_"Yes Sir."_

_"Your sister would already be done with college. But you probably knew that too."_

_"Yes Sir."_

_He sighed as I dug my pointed toe into the soil, the white stained brown by the dirt: The imperfect me, staining an otherwise flawless family._

_"I'm very dissapointed in you. Your mother and I..." He sighed again, obviously looking for the right words._

_What he said next was a blow to the stomach so fierce, I nearly threw up._

_"You get the summer. After that, you're gone, do you undestand me?"_

_I looked up and saw that his once handsome face, lined with time and hardship, was stony and cold. What else could I say? "Yes Sir."_

_My summer was spent throwing odds and ends into boxes with my mother often watching me with a cold glare, simliar to that of a vulture waiting for its prey to die, a long stemmed glass of wine wedged between index and middle finger as if she had been born with it there. "Whatever will you do with yourself?" She asked lazily for the hundreth time. I paused for a moment to contemplate the question...again._

_"I don't know," I said sharply, keeping my answer as short as possible. My mother shrugged and took a sip from her wine. A silence so thick you could cut it with a knife settled around us as she drained the glass in one swift gulp._

_"You don't talk much," She noted, turning on her heel, "You never have."_

_She walked out of the room as I stuck my copy of The Great Gatsby into a box, tears streaming down my face, my shoulders beginning to shake with silent sobs. How badly I wish I could speak. I wished with all my heart that I could pour my heart out and tell them all what I thought. But my secret prevented me from doing so, keeping the words from bubbling out like a fountain of profanity and curses so foul, my uncle himself, a weathered Star Fleet veteran, would faint in shock._

_Speaking of Star Fleet..._

_I reached under my bed and pulled out a folder filled to the brim with a letter accepting me to the Star Fleet Academy and several rather well done reference letters from teachers I had begged to write these for me. It was unusual for someone my age to be accepted but it's what I wanted most of all._

_I held the letter to my heart and looked out the window and to the sun that was setting. The colors ran together into an array of starbusts that hurt my eyes. However, when I saw the sunset, I wondered if there really could be some way I could truly change my destiny._

* * *

-6 Years Later-

The sky over San Francisco was as blue as a robin's egg. Or so it was at the moment I glanced up and shielded my eyes from the glare of the sun above my head. In my lap was an open notebook filled scribbles and notes that might have looked like gobbledygook to any passerby.

Suddenly, my pocket began to vibrate and I quickly whipped out my phone and hit a button. Instantly, a man's somber face filled my vision. I quickly sat up a little straighter and nodded down at the phone.

"Admiral Reynolds. What can I do for you, Sir?" I asked in my best no-nonsense tone of voice as his caterpillar eyebrows crept closer together. The man had been like a second father to me ever since I had graduated from The Star Fleet Candidate school, almost 8 year prior. He only called when it was absolutely necessary but I was always pleased when he did so.

" Lieutenant Cornelius, do you remember that conversation we had about two months ago about that piece of tablet that they found in the Odin Nebula?"

I nodded, remembering the piece rather well. It hadn't been very large but it had held a gold mine of information. I had been on the team that had helped decipher it but I didn't believe that I had done any good. Mostly it was senior analysts and their mothers running around trying to decipher what one symbol meant in regards to another.

"Yes, what about it?" I asked, "When I was there they had mostly brushed me off with the whole thing. I had no part in it."

"Well, yes, but they want the entire group who deciphered it to come to a meeting today at 1300 in conference room 34D." Admiral Reynolds said as I nodded slowly and then looked at my watch. It was already 1245. "I should be going now but I hope to speak more to you at the meeting today. Reynolds, out."

The call ended and I dropped the phone back into my pocket, standing up and collecting my things. I gathered up everything in my arms and quickly began to rush towards the building where the meeting would be held.

Head down, I passed people in various states of uniforms for the Star Fleet talking, milling about and just enjoying the warmth of the sunlight that we so solemnly got in San Francisco when all of the sudden...

Wham!

My shoulder was thrown back as I made contact with someone else in a black uniform. Papers flew everywhere and my notebook skidded across the pavement.

"My apologies, Miss," A man's calm voice said as I whirled around and came face to face with someone I had seen several times around headquarters but had no reason to talk to. What was his name? Storm? Spike? No. It was Spock. A half human, half Vulcan hybrid who commanded the U.S.S. Enterprise under Captain Kirk...

"Are you alright?" Another voice asked as someone handed me back my notebook and offered me a hand. I pushed it away and stood up, adjusting my cover as I did so.

"Yes, I'm fine." I reassured the other man, a handsome man probably a few years older than myself who was looking at me with a glint in his eye that I only knew too well. "I apologize for running into you." I said, turning to the Vulcan, "My mind was going a million directions at once."

"No need to be sorry. I should have been watching where I was going as well." He gave me a small, reserved smile and I nodded back as he bent down to gather the rest of the papers that had fallen, "Might I ask you about your accent?"

"I'm Scottish, yeah." I said, trying to reorganize my papers, "Thanks for your help."

Without giving him the opportunity to ask any other questions, I turned on my heel and hurried off in the opposite direction, my eyes now fixed on a spot in the horizon to keep from running into anyone else.

Finally, I reached the conference room and quietly opened the door, the buzz of conversation making the air in the room crackle with tension. Finally, I saw Admiral Reynolds who, after making eye contact with me, nodded and motioned to a seat beside him. I quickly took my seat and leaned over to speak to him, "What's going on?"

Admiral Reynolds hesitated but then opened his mouth to speak. But before he could do this, the door burst open and the two men I had run into earlier strolled in!

"Is that...?" I began as Admiral Reynolds pursed his lips and watched the human walk in with an air of confidence.

"Captain Kirk and his first mate, Commander Spock."

"Ah," I stated because at the moment, I didn't really know what to say. Admiral Black, Commanding Officer of Star Fleet walked in and we all jumped to our feet at the position of attention.

"At ease, people." Admiral Black motioned for us to all sit down which we did with what would seem like apprehension. I glanced up at the senior linguistics officers who were watching Admiral Black with tension plastered on their faces. They were nervous. Who could blame them? This meeting was their specialty and theirs alone...and mine, of course but...

"I called this meeting to order because of a rather interesting discovery that was made on Hermaeus Prime not two hours ago." He waved his hand across a giant screen and a video began to play. It was mostly dark but several lights shone in the darkness. They moved slightly to the left and someone laughed off camera, their words unheard. Suddenly, something caught my eye and nearly made my heart stop. The light was pointing on a slab of rock etched with carvings that looked exactly like those on the rock that we had discovered not one week ago!

"No way..." a senior analyst gasped as light danced off the surface of the rock.

"Sir, that's impossible!" Someone said softly. The Admiral pursed his lips and watched our expressions change as the two people on screen spoke softly. We all knew the story. Hermaeus Prime was uninhabitable, a planet with an atmosphere so choked with methane, nothing could live there. The only thing that could even grow on the planet was the microbes that caused the methane gasses in the first place.

"Nothing can live there," I said, stating the obvious. I felt Admiral Reynolds kick me under the table as Admiral Black glanced my way, his stone colored eyes meeting mine. I quickly averted them as the room became so quiet, you could hear a pin drop.

"Oh? And where do you think this writing came from, Lieutenant...?" He strained his neck to get a look at my nametag.

"Cornelius, Sir." I responded looking up at the stone, "I don't think it's such a good idea to..."

"No, speak. I want to hear your theory." He leaned forward and nodded for me to stand up. I did on shaky legs as I smoothed out my dress uniform and sighed. I should have never said anything.

"Well, perhaps the planet was once hospitable and the indigenous species either came from this planet or maybe traded with the race that created the stone tablets in the first place. Either way, the rock itself doesn't even look the same. The rock that this is written on is darker than the tablet that the Vigorous brought back from Tannesbourne."

The whole room was deathly silent after my little speech until one of the senior analysists began to laugh.

"Do you realize what you just did, Lieutenant?" He asked as others joined in, laughter making my ears burn. I knew exactly what I had done but I decided to play it cool.

"I don't understand what you're talking about, Commander." I said coolly as a pair of eyes caught my attention. They were dark, cool, calculating. They were the eyes of someone who had discovered a new species and wanted to dissect them with their mind. They also happened to be the eyes of Captain Kirk's first commander, Spock.

I quickly looked back to Admiral Black and I also saw he wasn't laughing. He too was watching me but unlike Spocks dark eyes, they were alive, the cogs turning behind bright green. He stood up and instantly the laughter in the room died down.

"Lieutenant Cornelius, you just switched from English to some damned language that I've never heard before. Commander Ashley, do you...?"

"She was speaking Vulcan, Admiral Black." A sudden voice rang out over the silence as all eyes turned to the speaker. It was again, Spock. He too stood up and looked right at me, "She knows Vulcan. Tell me, Lieutenant, how long did it take you to become fluent in Vulcan?"

I hesitated. I wasn't sure if I wanted to spill the truth. My entire life, I had to lie but when I looked at him, I could almost feeling him trying to pry the truth from between my lips.

"Two years, Commander." I said sharply, sitting back down. He nodded and sat back down, looking back towards Admiral Black.

He nodded slowly and then looked back at the Commander Ashley, "What do you think, Commander?"

"I think there's a bigger problem on hand," he said, glancing to the screen, "As impressive as Lieutenant Cornelius's grip on the Vulcan language is, I want to send a team of analysts to Hermaeus Prime and inspect the tablet."

"What about Cornelius, Admiral?" Admiral Reynolds said suddenly as my stomach quickly did a backflip.

"What about her?" He asked, arching an eyebrow and nodding in my direction. I hated being in the spotlight, it was nothing I ever wanted for myself, especially with my so called "gift." I wanted nothing more than to slide down into my chair and pull my hair over my bright red face and never be seen again.

"She just spoke quite fluently in Vulcan. I have had the opportunity to work with her as well. Perhaps she can prove herself? Send her with the crew you chose to retrieve the tablet."

Admiral Black was silent for a moment before nodding slowly, "I think it's a good idea. Commander Ashley, what do you think?"

"If you think it's a wise idea. She did actually help out quite a bit with the translation when we brought back the original tablet." He said, rubbing his chin in thought, "I have faith in her."

"Then it's settled." Admiral Black said before turning his gaze to Captain Kirk, "Captain, I want you to take the U.S.S. Enterprise and retrieve the tablet. Lieutenant Cornelius here will decipher what she can and send all findings back to Starfleet Headquarters."

"It would be an honor to retrieve it," Captain Kirk said nodding and throwing me a quick wink. I rolled my eyes and then looked back to Admiral Black who was watching me with great interest.

"Do I dare ask how you feel about this, Lieutenant?" He asked. I was unsure if he was teasing but chose to answer him seriously.

"I feel that you could choose someone else," I admitted, "But I am honored for the opportunity to prove myself. Thank you, Admiral."

"Ah, some proper English from this girl! Captain, how soon can your crew be ready to leave?"

Kirk thought for a moment before responding, "I could be ready to go by sunrise tomorrow morning."

"Excellent. You are all dismissed. Lieutenant, I will have Commander Ashley send you the debrief for the assignment."

I nodded and saluted, "Thank you again, Admiral."

He saluted back and smirked slightly, "Tell me Cornelius, how much space traveling have you done?"

"None, Sir."

He chuckled and then motioned for Admiral Reynolds to join him, "You'll like it. Your skills will come in handy out there."

I nodded and took off down the hallway. Not five seconds later, a ping came from my pocket, notifying me that the debrief had made it to my phone.

"Your pronunciation was good but your syllables need some work," A sudden voice made me jump and I whipped around to see Spock standing behind me, his eyes still cool and as dark as stones.

I felt my spine tingle, feeling slightly defensive, at the comment, "I'll have you know that I'm known as one of the top linguistics officer in the Vulcan language on the planet."

"I'll believe that when I see it," Spock said in a no-nonsense tone of voice, "Good luck, Lieutenant."

With that, he turned on his heel and walked away, leaving me to wonder what exactly I had gotten myself into.


End file.
